Abstract: A system and method for rapidly developing items is presented. A root item is created or identified as a starting point for development of an item template. The item template is developed from the selected root item using a key calculation as well as calculations to generate distractors to ensure that an item discriminates well. The template identifies variables, provides the calculation and rationale for each answer option, and defines any variable constraints. Items are then cloned from the template. The cloned items may be identical in format to the root items. Finally, the statistical performance of the cloned item is verified by subjecting a few select cloned items to undergo an initial statistical analysis to validate the performance of a template and, once validated, multiple cloned items may be created and used in scored positions on future test administrations without needing to pretest.